Saturday, December 29, 2012

One Week To XMAS Skype!

Hello family!

I'll be skyping you in
two days so I'll keep this short. But here are some updates from week 2
in Baao! Also I guess we're all really blessed to be emailing each other
right now, because right, wasn't the world supposed to end on the 21st or
something?

This week was great.
Elder Balanon and I have gotten into a grove. Good hard work.
But the most excited this is our meals. He cooks, I do dishes.
I love it. We didn't really have to worry about that too much
though because we got fed almost every meal this week! Good, tasty
Filipino food. And I got to try some tasty new foods (intestine, dinuguan
- basically cooked blood, as well as chicken head) to add to what I've already
experienced here.

We had a two hour bus
ride the other day. I guess it was the Philippines' Christmas present to
me because they played Taylor Swift the whole way! I guess I just blurted
out my "guilty pleasure" to you all.

We had the missionary
Christmas Conference last week so I got to see a bunch of people that I haven't
in quite some time. The next day was our Branch Christmas party. We
thought after that there would be a bunch of people that went to church in our
little group on Sunday, but the holidays proved to be the opposite. Only
16 of us at church! Elder and I both blessed and passed the sacrament.
I'm still easing in to the culture shock.

Saturday I had my first
baptism! Justin, just nine years old. His mom recently started
coming back to church and now their little family are some of the strongest
members of the Baao Group! Yay!

That's it. Can't
wait for skype in two days! Love,

Elder Shane Scully Brown

Pictures -

1. I didn't actually make
it to the top. Much too scary for me.

2. E. Apolinario,
he was the first Filipino that I met. We hung out at the airport in
Manila and spent our first two days in the field together. We saw each
other again for the first time at Christmas Conference last week.